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Cigarettes & Coffee.

I miss smoking and I know I shouldn’t.

Before I get a million lectures on the subject, let me say it out in the open, I miss it. I miss the ritual of it. The lighting, the inhaling and the slow exhaling. I miss the solidarity of the moment. How you could be surrounded by hundreds of people, but when you needed an escape the cigarette was your alibi. It relaxed you and calmed the shakes that trembled from your chest to your fingertips. The moment you tapped your first pack and took off its wrapper, it opened something inside of you. The smells of tobacco and the memories a smell holds with it. This familiarity that something so bad could make the worries of the moments disappear.

Inhale, exhale.

I disappeared in every smokey haze. Hiding from the world without a moments notice. The countless conversations I reasoned with myself with every puff I gave. Its something I never got with breathing. A sensation that never felt obtainable with just the air in my lungs. I loved it, then hated it. I denied it, then craved it. Something to take the edge of life, off of my hands. I could disappear in this cloudy, smokey, haze. Disappear into the smoke, where no one would find me. Have a moment with myself that I could never get with the open air and clear views.

I miss cigarettes like I miss conversations. Because all the meaningful conversations happen outside at night around 1 am, with the street lights illuminating your smoke. Your mouth slowly forming words and phrases. I miss that. This smell that stuck to every inch of your skin and lingered over all your overcoats. Breathing in the cold air and flowing inside every inch of your lungs. I felt it like a breaking heart, like a sad song with an upsetting melody. My body craves it on the dark days when I have nothing left to say. But it’s bad. It’s all bad for me. The ash, the smoke and the light that burns until I have nothing left.

I feel stuck. Finding something to take away the craving. Locating the thing I can sit with to find a single word of conversation. I could stare into the bottom of every cup of coffee. I could sit and stare for hours at the water that dyes every inside of every cup. I feel nothing, I crave something more. After ever last drop of coffee, nothing gives you satisfaction as that last drag of a cigarette.